Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: Meaning, Quotes & Summary - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: Meaning, Quotes & Summary Watch short & fun videos Start Your Free Trial Today An error occurred trying to load this video. Try refreshing the page, or contact customer support. You must create an account to continue watching Register for a free trial Are you a student or a teacher? I am a student Start Your Free Trial To Continue Watching As a member, you'll also get unlimited access to over lessons in math, English, science, history, and more. Plus, get practice tests, quizzes, and personalized coaching to help you succeed. Coming up next: Shakespeare's Caliban: Character Analysis, Overview You're on a roll. Keep up the good work! Your next lesson will play in 10 seconds 0:02 Who Are Rosencrantz &… Add to Add to Add to Want to watch this again later? Log in or sign up to add this lesson to a Custom Course. Custom Courses are courses that you create from Study.com lessons. Use them just like other courses to track progress, access quizzes and exams, and share content.

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Lesson Transcript Instructor: Shamekia Thomas Shamekia has taught English at the secondary level and has her doctoral degree in clinical psychology. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two minor characters who play an important role in William Shakespeare's popular play 'Hamlet.' Learn more about the significance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and test your knowledge with a quiz. Who Are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern After the death of his father, Prince Hamlet begins behaving in unusual ways, which causes concern for his mother and uncle. In an effort to find out what was troubling Hamlet, King Claudius and Queen Gertrude send for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two of Hamlet's closest friends, with haste to use them for 'the supply and profit of (their) hope' in Act II, Scene 2. Instead of serving as friends of Hamlet's, they end up being traitors who agree to take Hamlet to his death. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem to function as one character in the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, because they are always presented together and function as a unit.

At times it seems that others see them as a single person rather than two distinct men, and they are described as 'half men.' When speaking of Hamlet's behavior, they finish each other's statements. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor characters of major importance. They serve as the go-between between Hamlet and King Claudius on several occasions. Significance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do whatever Claudius asks of them. They even try to discover what Hamlet did with Polonius' body for the King. Rosencrantz asks Hamlet, 'What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?' (Act 4, Scene 2, line 5). They are not able to get Hamlet to give them any of the information they seek. Hamlet with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in an image by Eugene Delacroix When they report back to the King, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern report that Hamlet 'does confess he feels himself distracted, but from what cause he will by no means speak' (Act III, Scene 1 lines 5-6).

They, like others, have not been able to discover what bothers Hamlet. × Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead ( 1990 ) PG | Two minor characters from the play 'Hamlet' stumble around unaware of their scripted lives and unable to deviate from them. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC Famous Directors: From Sundance to Prominence From Christopher Nolan to Quentin Tarantino and every Coen brother in between, many of today's most popular directors got their start at the Sundance Film Festival . Here's a list of some of the biggest names to go from Sundance to Hollywood prominence.

a list of 38 titles created 21 Sep 2012 a list of 47 titles created 02 Mar 2014 a list of 21 titles created 10 months ago a list of 25 titles created 9 months ago a list of 42 titles created 3 months ago Title: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) 7.6/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. 3 wins & 2 nominations. See more awards » Photos Edit Storyline Showing events from the point of view of two minor characters from Hamlet, men who have no control over their destiny, this film examines fate and asks if we can ever really know what's going on? Are answers as important as the questions? Will Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (or Guildenstern and Rosencrantz) manage to discover the source of Hamlet's malaise as requested by the new king? Will the mysterious players who are strolling around the castle reveal the secrets they evidently know? And whose serve is it?

Written by Mark Thompson <mrt@oasis.icl.co.uk> 8 February 1991 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Did You Know? Trivia Originally cast with Sean Connery as the Player King, Sting and Roger Rees and Robert Lindsay as the titular leads, it collapsed when Connery had to undergo a serious throat operation. See more » Goofs Throughout the movie there are scenes where day suddenly changes to night and vice versa. This is a running gag of Tom Stoppard plays which often have "time jumps" written into the stage directions. See more » Quotes [Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are riding horses down a path - they pause] Rosencrantz : [to Guildenstern] Umm, uh... [Guildenstern rides away, and Rosencrantz follows. Rosencrantz spots a gold coin on the ground] Rosencrantz : [to horse] Whoa - whoa, whoa. [Gets off horse and starts flipping the coin] Rosencrantz : Hmmm. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads.

Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. [Guildenstern grabs the coin, checks both sides, then tosses it back to Rosencrantz] plot within a plot within a plot... 26 August 2004 | by grlwndr23 (chicago, USA) – See all my reviews This clever screenplay by Tom Stoppard challenges the viewer to listen and watch closely as the Shakespeare tragedy Hamlet is turned on its ear via taking the perspective of the oblivious rhetorics, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. There are multiple 'plot within plot' twists which intersect and skew at will, sometimes creating a surreal experience for the observer. The script is brilliant, full of double-entendres and mixed reactions executed superbly by Tim Roth and Gary Oldman, along with a solid supporting cast (including American actor Richard Dreyfus). Stoppard felt that the title characters, messengers in the original play, were under represented and so examines their possible perspectives in the tale by way of exploring their destiny and their lack-of-awareness of it.

Stunning and hilarious wordplay with excellent repartee between Oldman and Roth. Refreshing and creative spin of the tale of Denmark's 'melancholy prince'. 53 of 61 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes The character of Hamlet in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead from LitCharts | The creators of SparkNotes Claudius The famously passive protagonist of Shakespeare's play, Hamlet is the Prince of Denmark, son to Gertrude, and nephew to Claudius who goes half-mad after his father dies and his mother marries Claudius. Fearful of Hamlet's menacing mad speeches, Claudius sends Hamlet to be killed in England in the care of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. En route, Hamlet stealthily reads and rewrites Claudius' order, resulting in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's execution. As in Shakespeare's play, Stoppard's Hamlet eludes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's every attempt to gather information on him and tricks them into being executed. Yet in Stoppard's play, Hamlet is a secondary character with a fragmented presence as he wanders on and offstage.

Still, though rarely onstage, Hamlet frequently features in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's dialogue as the two remain haunted and worried about their relationship to Hamlet throughout the play. Hamlet Quotes in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead The Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead quotes below are all either spoken by Hamlet or refer to Hamlet. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one: ). Note: all page and citation info for the quotes below refers to the Grove Press edition of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead published in 1967. Act 2 Quotes Download it! Hamlet Character Timeline in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead The timeline below shows where the character Hamlet appears in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance. Act 1 ...from exterior to interior. An alarmed Ophelia runs on stage followed by a piteously disheveled Hamlet. They're mute. He scrutinizes her face, then sighs.

They exit. Claudius and Gertrude enter and... (full context) Hamlet crosses the stage reading and exits. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern practice being in character by addressing... (full context) Guildenstern tells Rosencrantz to go see if Hamlet's there. Rosencrantz peeks offstage where he reports seeing Hamlet talking. He wonders if they should... (full context) Act 2 Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Hamlet's conversation continues from the previous scene, though what they're saying is at first indecipherable. The... (full context) Polonius enters and calls out to them. Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that Polonius is a baby, and then walks upstage with Rosencrantz.... (full context) ...and hawing between them. Guildenstern suggests that they "made some headway" but Rosencrantz says that Hamlet "made us look ridiculous." They assess their interaction with the prince in terms of the... (full context) Remembering Hamlet's comments about the wind's direction, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try to figure out which way is...

(full context) Polonius enters and exits with Hamlet and the Tragedians. Hamlet makes arrangements with the Player for a performance of The Murder... (full context) Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and the Player next try to pinpoint the cause of Hamlet's state, a conversation that proves equally futile: "The old man thinks he's in love with... (full context) ...upstage to take Rosencrantz's place with Claudius while Gertrude asks Rosencrantz about their progress with Hamlet. Guildenstern joins in too. Rosencrantz, obviously lying, tells Gertrude that Hamlet asked few questions and... (full context) ...to and fro, makes to leave stage himself. He loses confidence. Looking offstage, he notices Hamlet's coming and runs back downstage to tell Guildenstern. Guildenstern laments ever getting Hamlet "into conversation."... (full context) Ophelia enters with a prayerbook. Hamlet greets her and they exit talking. Guildenstern sarcastically congratulates Rosencrantz on intercepting them, then orders... (full context) Ophelia enters wailing and followed by a hysterically shouting Hamlet.

Then addressing her and the Tragedians as well (and looking pointedly at the Player-Queen and... (full context) ...her feet. The Tragedians leap back and incline their heads. Claudius speaks actual lines from Hamlet, musing on Hamlet's psychological state. He's not in love, Claudius thinks, and not mad, but... (full context) ...marriage to his mother, turns crazy and murderous. They act out a stylized version of Hamlet's "Closet Scene" (in which Hamlet confronts Gertrude and murders Polonius). Here, the Player-King stands in... (full context) ...can protest, Claudius calls Guildenstern's name from offstage. Claudius and Gertrude enter. Claudius explains that Hamlet has killed Polonius in madness and asks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to go find Hamlet and... (full context) Confused again, Rosencrantz shouts for Hamlet, who comes on stage. They ask about the corpse, which Hamlet says he's compounded. When... (full context) ...what?" Guildenstern asks.

Rosencrantz breezily dismisses everything, claiming not to care, then catches sight of Hamlet offstage. Guildenstern exclaims he knew it wasn't over and that they will be taking Hamlet... (full context) Hamlet enters with a soldier who explains that the troops coming through are sent against Poland... (full context) Act 3 ...off to the assumption that they've sailed north. Upstage, out of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's sight, Hamlet lights a lantern that brightens the stage enough to see. Light reveals "three large man-sized... (full context) ...to move, speak, extemporize" but not "cut loose" – they are still, as ordered, taking Hamlet to England. (full context) Rosencrantz notices Hamlet upstage sleeping. "It's all right for him [to sleep]" Rosencrantz notes. "He's got us now,"... (full context) ...role-play, Guildenstern presents the letter and as Rosencrantz reads it aloud they realize it orders Hamlet's beheading. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern separate onstage, stand in silence, then remark on the weather. After...

(full context) Guildenstern long-windedly justifies letting Hamlet be killed – he would, being mortal, have died anyway, and is just "one man... (full context) Morning rises on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with Hamlet behind them reading on a deck chair beneath the umbrella. Rosencrantz announces he's "assuming nothing"... (full context) The Player asks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern if they've spoken with Hamlet. They reply: "it's possible" but "pointless." Guildenstern explains that they are without restrictions and can... (full context) Rosencrantz describes Hamlet's condition: "A compulsion towards philosophical introspection…It does not mean he is mad. It does not... (full context) ...everyone on stage runs around frantically shouting with swords out in a great hullabaloo. Eventually, Hamlet, the Player, and Rosencrantz with Guildenstern jump into the three barrels on stage to hide.... (full context) "Immediately" the entire stage lights up and reveals the corpses of Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, and Hamlet sprawled in court as in the last scene of Hamlet.

The corpses are in the... (full context) Cite This Page Choose citation style: Ross, Margaret. "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Characters: Hamlet." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 18 Dec 2013. Web. 19 Jan 2017. Ross, Margaret. "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Characters: Hamlet." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 18 Dec 2013. Web. 19 Jan 2017. Ross, Margaret. "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Characters: Hamlet." LitCharts LLC, December 18, 2013. Retrieved January 19, 2017. Ross, Margaret. "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Characters: Hamlet." LitCharts LLC, December 18, 2013. Retrieved January 19, 2017.

Copy to Clipboard SparkNotes: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: Themes, Motifs & Symbols Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Tom Stoppard Act I: Beginning of Play to Entrance of Tragedians Themes The Incomprehensibility of the World Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead highlights the fundamental mystery of the world. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern spend the entirety of the play in total confusion, lacking such basic information as their own identities. From the play’s opening, which depicts them as unable to remember where they are headed and how they began their journey, to their very last moments, in which they are bewildered by their imminent deaths, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern cannot understand the world around them. Their confusion stems from both the sheer randomness of the universe, illustrated by the bizarre coin-tossing episode, and the ambiguous and unclear motives of the other characters, who pop onstage and deliver brief, perplexing speeches before quickly exiting. While Stoppard frequently uses their confusion for comic effect, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern occasionally become so frustrated by the world’s incomprehensibility that they fall into despair.

The play ultimately suggests that the prominent role of chance in our lives, coupled with the difficulty of discerning the true intentions and desires of other people, leads to almost paralyzing confusion. Although this experience may sometimes be amusing or seem funny when it happens to others, in the end it is one of the most dreadful aspects of existence. The Difficulty of Making Meaningful Choices The constant confusion in which they find themselves leaves Rosencrantz and Guildenstern feeling unable to make any significant choices in their lives. They are pushed along toward their deaths by what appear to be random forces, and they fail to respond to their circumstances with anything but total passivity. Their lack of agency is underscored by Stoppard’s decision to transport them from scene to scene without any choice on their part. One minute Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are in the woods with the Tragedians, and the next they are in Elsinore being asked to probe Hamlet’s distressed mind, a request they accept without even understanding what they have been asked to do.

Even at the end of Act II, when they ask each other if they should go to England, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not make a choice but instead merely continue on the path that has been laid out for them. Since they have already come this far, Rosencrantz says, they may as well keep going. Their passive approach to their lives reflects how difficult it is to make decisions in a world that we do not fully understand, in which any choice can seem meaningless and therefore not worth making. Stoppard demonstrates the danger of this passivity by giving Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the opportunity to make a very meaningful choice, which they fail to do. This moment occurs when they discover that they have a letter ordering Hamlet’s death upon their arrival in England: if they destroy it, Hamlet lives, but if they do nothing, he dies. While Rosencrantz hesitates about what to do, Guildenstern argues that they should not take any action, since they might not understand what is at stake.

Although this decision may seem like an unfeeling rationalization for moral laziness, it is in fact simply an extension of the passivity that has marked Rosencrantz and Guildenstern throughout the play. By failing to make a significant choice when they have the opportunity to do so, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern incur terrible consequences, as Hamlet discovers the letter and switches it with one ordering their deaths rather than his own. Even though deciding which actions we should take in life is at times so difficult that we might be tempted to succumb to total passivity, failing to act is itself a decision, one that the play presents as not merely immoral but self-destructive. The Relationship Between Life and the Stage Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead emphasizes the close connection between real life and the world of theatrical performance. Numerous features of the play work to underscore this connection, not least of which is the fact that the play asks its audience to assume that the characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet are real and deserve to have their story told from another perspective.

Within the play, the connection between life and the stage is revealed to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by the presence of the Tragedians, who perform a play that depicts parallel events to those in which the two men find themselves. This play shows that the characters most similar to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are ultimately killed, which is precisely the fate that befalls Stoppard’s main characters. As they watch the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern see that the two actors playing the roles parallel their own are dressed exactly as they are. This confuses Rosencrantz so much that he wonders why he recognizes the actor dressed as himself but then tells the actor that he is not who the actor believed he was. In other words, theater reflects life so well that Rosencrantz cannot tell which is which. Guildenstern criticizes the Player for assuming that theatrical performance can depict real feelings, especially the terror of death.

The Player’s response is twofold—he claims that theatrical death is the only kind people believe in because it is what they expect, and then he demonstrates that point to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by convincingly performing his own death when Guildenstern stabs him with a stage knife. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are completely persuaded by the Player’s performance, which lends credence to his claim that people really do believe in the things that theater has led them to expect. Indeed, the characters only believe in death when it looks theatrical, as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern cannot quite bring themselves to believe in their own impending deaths, for which they are unable to form any expectations. The audience cannot believe in their deaths either, at least according to the logic of the play and the Player, since the audience’s expectation that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern will die is never fulfilled. By refusing to depict their deaths and refusing to give the audience what it knows is coming, Stoppard keeps Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from dying and instead turns them into living literary characters.

Motifs Shakespeare’s Hamlet Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead actively engages with Shakespeare’s Hamlet through quotation and visual cues. Stoppard includes many of Hamlet’s most notable scenes in a way that casts them in a new light. For instance, the most famous portion of Hamlet is the “To be or not to be” soliloquy, Hamlet’s monologue about mortality and whether he should kill himself. Stoppard includes this scene, but it occurs in the background, while Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in the foreground, wonder whether to approach Hamlet. As Hamlet mulls over his death, they decide that the time is perfect for a casual chat. This belief is deeply at odds with Hamlet’s actual state of mind, which the audience knows but the characters do not. Such dramatic irony is funny, but it serves a larger purpose. Hamlet is regarded as one the greatest works of world literature, but Stoppard’s comic treatment of it shows the importance of viewing Hamlet on its own terms rather than as the apex of literary tradition.

By presenting Hamlet not as a great artifact but as a play that depicts real feelings and complex characters, Stoppard reminds his audience of the power of Shakespeare’s play to speak to us on an individual, human level. The Lord’s Prayer Throughout the play, Guildenstern performs punning riffs on a segment of the Lord’s Prayer, uttered by Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and known to many people as the “Our Father” prayer. Guildenstern usually replaces the final word of the phrase give us this day our daily bread with a word that both rhymes with Rosencrantz’s most recent remark and forms a pun on their situation. For instance, after Claudius and Gertrude greet Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, mix up their identities, and ask them to probe Hamlet’s mind, the two become so confused that they can hardly speak straight. Rosencrantz cries out, “Consistency is all I ask!” to which Guildenstern responds, “Give us this day our daily mask.” Guildenstern’s substitution of the word mask for bread is deeply ironic.

In the prayer, Jesus asks God to provide something people need on a daily basis—bread—while Guildenstern asks for something that the two men have too much of—masks, or shields, that prevent their identity from being known. Since even they cannot keep themselves straight, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern would have little need for masks, and thus Guildenstern’s remark is a bleak, almost resigned response to their situation. This ironic reuse of a sacred text parallels Stoppard’s irreverent use of another hallowed literary work, Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Stoppard wants to emphasize the lure of literary works—be they prayers or plays—but he also wants to show the danger of relying on them exclusively to help us solve our problems. People often look to literature in times of need, but Stoppard reminds us that although such works as the Lord’s Prayer or Hamlet may seem universally appealing, they are grounded in specific circumstances and are about specific people, and thus they cannot be applied to any situation indiscriminately.

Guildenstern calls on the Lord’s Prayer when placed in trying situations, but it does him no good, and his punning substitutions point out that there is no piece of literature that can help them through their particular situation. Thus Stoppard reminds his audience that great literature—be it religious or secular—is not a blueprint for how to lead our lives. Rather, literature itself struggles to make sense of the complex business of living in a confusing, often frustrating world. Gambling Scenes of gambling occur repeatedly in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and underscore the central role that chance plays in the lives of the characters. The play opens with Guildenstern losing bet after bet to Rosencrantz as the flipped coins keep coming up heads. Later, Guildenstern tricks the Player into accepting a bet that the year of the Player’s birth doubled is an even number, and Rosencrantz tries to cheer up Guildenstern on the ship to England by giving his friend a chance to win the same bet. All this gambling, this reliance on chance rather than individual actions, highlights how much chance drives the lives of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and how little they do to counteract it.

Although they are frustrated that chance puts them in unmanageable situations, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern take no action to help themselves and instead surrender to chance by relying on gambling. Confronted with the troubling randomness of reality, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not try to resist it. Instead, they embrace the very thing that is tormenting them, finding it easier to give in to chance than take the difficult step of actively deciding how best to lead their lives. Symbols The Coins The coins that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern flip at the beginning of the play symbolize both the randomness of the world and the play’s exploration of oppositional forces. The pattern of coin after coin landing heads up defies the expectation that the laws of probability actually do work and that the world makes clear sense. Instead, the coins suggest that the world is ruled by randomness and the occurrence of highly improbable events. The point made by the coins is reiterated by the way that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern get caught up in a string of improbable situations that, from their perspective at least, occur entirely at random and make no sense whatsoever.

Randomness is often contrasted to determinism, the notion that events happen according to some unbreakable plan. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead combines randomness with determinism to suggest that chance seems deterministic. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern feel that they can do nothing to counteract the chance’s determinist force, just as they can do nothing to stop the coins from landing heads up. The coins also stand in for the play’s exploration of oppositional forces. Although the coins land heads up so many times that they may seem one-sided, coins are actually two-sided, a fact the audience is reminded of when a coin lands tails up. This two-sidedness reflects the many sets of opposites in the play, from the division between Guildenstern’s philosophical pessimism and Rosencrantz’s pragmatic optimism to the dual nature of language, which is a source of both pleasurable wit and painful confusion. Imagining the world as a set of opposites is somewhat at odds with the coins’ symbolism of a world dominated by chance, since oppositions impose order on the world. Stoppard resolves this tension by having the oppositions in the play break down.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern reveal themselves to be more complex and less oppositional than they initially seem, for instance. This breakdown of oppositional forces is reflected in the coins in that the laws of probability suggest that flipped coins should split evenly between heads and tails, but Stoppard shows that such a simple model does not account for the sheer randomness of the world. The Boat Almost the entirety of Act III takes place onboard a boat to England, and Stoppard uses the boat to reflect the experience of living in a universe that is beyond our control. Guildenstern initially responds quite positively to being on the boat, noting that it is pleasurable to give up responsibility and allow oneself to simply be carried along through life. This resignation to life’s randomness is freeing, Guildenstern believes, because it means that we no longer have to worry about whether we are making the right decisions—we can just relax and see where life takes us. The play suggests that this is a naïve and dangerous attitude, however, as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s refusal to take any action for themselves will end up getting them killed.

Guildenstern realizes that getting on the boat was a mistake, since giving up their freedom meant that they lost all control over their lives. Simply giving in to the randomness of the world, as well as believing that giving in leads to freedom, are self-destructive gestures. These gestures make us like men on a boat they cannot steer, unable to do anything about our experiences. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Rosencrantz and Guildenstern From Hamlet. Eds. F. A. Purcell and L. M. Somers. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern had been fellow-students of Hamlet at Wittenberg, and were much beloved by him. "Good gentlemen," says the Queen, he hath much talk'd of you; And, sure I am, two men there are not living To whom he more adheres. -- II. ii. 19. They are received with cordiality by the Prince, and are entertained without reserve until he perceives they have been corrupted by the King. They are typical of men whose inclinations are good, but who lack character to follow those inclinations. They cannot even practice villainy with success.

"You were sent for," says Hamlet, "and there is a kind of confession in your looks, which your modesties have not craft enough to colour." They commit no actual crime in the play, and are apparently no worse than the society in which they move. Hamlet tells Rosencrantz that he "soaks up" the king's countenance, his rewards, his authorities; he keeps them, like an ape doth nuts, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to be last swallowed: when he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again, IV. ii. 17. They are fools more than they are knaves, but Shakespeare knows that folly is often more harmful than knavery. When death is meted out to them as a punishment for their base servility, Hamlet satisfies himself with the reflection, Why, man, they did make love to this employment; They are not near my conscience; their defeat Does by their own insinuation grow. -- V. ii. 57. He feels no compunction at their fate, and though their punishment is severe, they leave the world no poorer for their loss.

"Wilhelm Meister translates Hamlet and adapts it for the stage; a difficulty arises in finding characters to fill all the parts, and Serlo, the stage manager, suggests that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern should be compressed into one. 'Heaven preserve me from all such curtailments!' answered Wilhelm, 'they destroy at once the sense and the effect. What these two persons are and do, it is impossible to represent by one. In such small matters, we discover Shakespeare's greatness. These soft approaches, this smirking and bowing, this assenting, wheedling, flattering, this whisking agility, this wagging of the tail, this allness and emptiness, this legal knavery, this ineptitude and insipidity, -- how can they be expressed by a single man? There ought to be at least a dozen of these people, if they could be had: for it is only in society that they are anything; they are society itself, and Shakespeare showed no little wisdom and discernment in bringing in a pair of them.'" -- Goethe. How to cite this article: Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Eds. F. A. Purcell and L. M.

Somers. Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1916. Shakespeare Online. 2 Aug. 2013. < >. _______ Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern compared to Hamlet Integrity According to Martin Esslin, the major difference between Absurdist and conventional drama is that in conventional drama the audience is anticipating the action, wondering what will happen next; while in an absurdist play the audience is mainly caught up in wondering what is happening now. Context and background: The values of the 17th century and its violence and dramatics are juxtaposed with that of the 1960’s postmodernism existentialism and absurdism through the transformation of Hamlet to RNG, with indications to influences upon society from the respective eras in which the texts were composed. The contextual significance is evident through the thematic content between the two texts, as well as through the attitudes towards the concept of theatre. In many ways, R & G is a transformed version of Hamlet, yet to some extent it is an inversion. While it appropriates many of same issues, it differs markedly in technique and it can be concluded that it is transformed by context and perspective.

Similar to T.S Eliot’s The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, the transformation reveals man diminished from hero to victim, losing direction entirely; ‘I am not Prince Hamlet, I am an attendant lord…almost at times the fool.’ Theatre of illusion. The audience deluded into thinking they are watching real time events The structure of the plays change the way the audience is presented with the concepts of life. Hamlet is a climactic structure, sequentially ordered from beginning, middle and end, has motifs to bond it, with cause and affect. Theatre of Action and emotional involvement The involvement of the audience from Hamlet to R&G changes the response and emotions of the audience. In Hamlet we have a hero and avenger who build up to a climax. Hamlet suffers melancholy, depression and builds anger and frustration eventually leading to the dramatic death of Laertes, Claudius, Polonius, Gertrude, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Ophelia and Hamlet himself. We identify and relate to Hamlet and this involvement becomes a vicarious experience of suffering arousing pity and fear leading to Catharsis, or release of tension, and a purging, soothing to the soul.

This experience has a temporary affect and no lasting consequences on the readers feelings. Emphasis on structure, causation, unity, cohesion…. (see notes on motifs in Hamlet) Theatre of realism The conventions of illusion are broken by the actors joining the audience and talking directly to us. They become part of the audience during “Hamlet” . R&G has an amorphous structure, with random events and ideas. Life is random and completely unstructured and incomprehensible. Theatre of Alienation – isolation In R&G the audience is distanced and alienated from the action and critically evaluate it. Instead of becoming emotional involved with R&G’s situation, we are detached and objectively analyse them. Theatre of intellectualism aims to change the way the audience permanently thinks, and affect the way we act in society. Appeals to the masses, the collective psyche It involves mass suffering. We are distanced or alienated (estranged) from the action and critically evaluate it. Instead of getting emotionally involved we are detached and objective. Instead of playing with our emotions, E.T. affects the mind and moves us to action leading to social remedies. Often disconnected scenes, Confusing dialogue, perplexing situations, what is happening?

Characters: In Hamlet, R&G are indistinguishable while in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern there are minor delineations but not necessarily consistency. Character There's a logic at work - it's all done for you, don't worry. Enjoy it. Relax. Player: Uncertainty is the normal state. You're nobody special. Free to act? This can be seen when Guildenstern states; “We are not restricted. No boundaries have been defined, no inhibitions imposed.” However this is juxtaposed to when Guil realises his own destiny after reading the letter addressed to the King of England as he states, “We can change direction, rattle about, but our movement is contained within a larger one that carries us along” *2.Existentialism is a 19th C. philosophy that rejects the determinist view that the universe is preordained or programmed. If there is a god he/she has abandoned us to our own freely willed fate. The individual is fully responsible for their own destiny. Life is generally depicted as austere, full of anguish, and pointless.

According to Nietzsche each of us has to rise above our limitations and become an “Ubermensch” (superman) and be a god unto himself or alternatively become an “untermench (loser) who can only follow orders. Existentialism has come to mean an individual’s perspective on life, its purpose, direction and meaning. Death is an abstract portrayal – competent convincing acting. Death is staged – not real or as Guil says: “I’m talking about death- and you’ve never experienced that. And you cannot act it. ….. But no one gets up after death – there is no applause – there is only silence and some second hand clothes, and that’s death. In Hamlet, the deaths of R&G are inconsequential to the audience whereas in this play we have been conditioned by the title and the characters preoccupation with death to feel empathy and apprehension throughout the play and identify with their impotence and the inevitability of their (out) predicament. Note that Stoppard considers this a play to be experienced rather than studied. Free to act? This can be seen when Guildenstern states; “We are not restricted.

No boundaries have been defined, no inhibitions imposed.” However this is juxtaposed to when Guil realises his own destiny after reading the letter addressed to the King of England as he states, “We can change direction, rattle about, but our movement is contained within a larger one that carries us along” Language Techniques: Lack of communication is a recurring theme in Absurdist plays. People can talk to each other without really communicating. Language is used to conceal your purpose rather than reveal it. As Rosencrantz says of Hamlet: “half of what he said meant something else and the other half didn’t mean anything at all” v In Waiting for Godot the two characters, They are speaking, like you and me, to fill a void, to pass the hours, to assert their identities, to pretend that they’re truly connected to someone, anyone else. Making noise is what they do to keep out the silence that’s waiting to step in and devour them. Of course, they like to hear themselves talk. It’s how they make sure they’re alive. ….But the audience is truly in on the joke of how hollow even our most elaborate conversational rituals are.

BEN BRANTLEY New York Times Review Here are some examples of linguistic obscurities: Find other examples in the work of how the writer has used language to reveal how our means of communication has become inadequate and words sometimes devoid of meaning or merely misunderstood. ¨ Puns: “Game” - fun, sport, tennis, daring, sex, ? Pg. 3. Word play – Pg. 33. “played close to the chest..” (47) Hamlet: Sun/son, Hamlet and Polonius,” honest man” Hamlet and Ophelia - “Are you honest?” Puns create humour and interest. They engage people by intriguing the responders. ¨ Clichés: Ros: “I’m out of my step here- Guild: “We’ll soon be home and high – dry and home” (29) Ros: “took the very words out of my mouth”. Guil: “You’d be lost for words”. Ros: “You’d be tongue tied. (53) Player: “I had an actor once.. condemned to hang for stealing a sheep – or a lamb ..” Pg. 76. Sheep = corrupted, Lamb = innocence.

Guild: “The pirates left us there high and dry” (111) Player: “ The times being what they are”. Ros: “What are they?” Player: “Indifferent”. Guild: “we’re still finding our feet”. Player: “I’d concentrate on not losing your heads.” Player: I know which way the wind is blowing”. A reference to an earlier discussion between Ros and Guild. “All in the same boat”. The fact that Ros and Guild use and misuse a lot of clichés indicates their inarticulateness. They have few original thoughts and are at a loss to express themselves with their own sentences. ¨ Parody: (Biblical) Guild: “Give us this day our daily mask” (30) , “cue” (93) , and “tune” (105) Player: It is written. Parody creates a gravitas or universalism to a work. It imbues a work with significance. ¨ Language somersaults - Ros: “He talks to himself, which might be madness” … Guild: ”…a man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself”.

Ros: … “Stark raving sane” (Oxymoron) Page 59 – 60. King’s remembrance,(reward) Ros: “how much?” Guild: “ Retentive-he’s a very retentive king, a royal retainer…” Ros: “What are you playing at?” Guild: “Words, words, They’re all we have to go on.” This echoes Hamlet’s reply to Polonius’s question, “What do you read?” ¨ Innuendo/double entendre: Guil: “He slipped in” As King and as lover/husband. Ros: His body was still warm Guil: So was hers. (41) Hamlet: “have you a daughter?” Pol: “I have my Lord.” “Let her not walk i’ th’ sun. Conception is a blessing, but as your daughter may conceive –Friend, look to’t.” 2.2. 179-183 Pol: “Will you walk out of the air sir? H “Into my grave” 2.2. 201 Ham. To Ophelia: “Do you think I meant country matters? 3.2.

104 Ham: Get thee to a nunnery. Their equilibrium is related to Fortuna’s body where they live not on her cap or the soles of her shoe, so Hamlet concludes: “Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours? Guild: “Faith, her privates we. Ham: “In the secret parts of Fortune? ..she is a strumpet.” Sexual references always generate interest or engagement. They grab people’s interest. Ros: ….”is that enough? Player: “For an audience, disappointing. For voyeurs, about average”. Chance/fate (16) Quote(they meet the Players) Performances/exhibitions (18) intrigued/enlightened (33) wind/draught (50) § Use of comedy (to shock us into the realisation of the disintegration of society also to detach us emotionally and engage us cerebrally.) § Farce: Because of the absurdity of many situations, the humour is often farcical or: § Slapstick- Video blurb describes them as the Shakespearean equivalents of Laurel and Hardy. § Black humour: Guild: “We’re still finding our feet”.

Player: “I should concentrate on not losing your head”. (57) Ros. He murdered us. Ros. They'll have us hanging about 'till we're dead! (Also irony) § romantic: not connected to the real world § Understatement: Guil: “Now mind your tongue, or we’ll have it out and throw the rest of you away,…. § Guil: You’d be lost for words. Ros: You’d be tongue-tied. Guil: Your diction would go to pieces. ……… Pg. 53-4. § Latin Phrases: tend to add gravitas or significance. The following words originating in Latin or Greek referring to Killing are less emotive than our more common words. SparkNotes: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: Act I: Change of Lights to End of Act Act I: Change of Lights to End of Act → Act I: Entrance of Tragedians to First Change of Lights Act II: Beginning of Act to Entrance of Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, and Ophelia Summary As the lights come up, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are now inside, watching as Ophelia rushes past, followed by Hamlet.

Silently, Hamlet grabs Ophelia but quickly releases her and runs offstage. Ophelia runs off as well. Then Claudius and Gertrude enter. Speaking Shakespearean English, Claudius confuses Rosencrantz with Guildenstern, then explains that he wants their help in determining what is wrong with Hamlet, their childhood friend. Speaking lines taken directly from the play Hamlet, Claudius says that Hamlet has recently changed, perhaps as a result of his father’s death. Gertrude echoes Claudius’s comments. Also in Shakespearean English, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern promise to do whatever they can to figure out what is bothering Hamlet. Polonius enters to say that he wishes he knew why Hamlet has changed so drastically. Everybody but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern leaves. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try to figure out what has just happened. Guildenstern comforts Rosencrantz by telling him that they will soon understand why they are there and what they need to do to return home. Guildenstern reminds him of the logic at work in the universe and says that the two just have to stick it out until the events have ended.

They start discussing possible causes of Hamlet’s madness, essentially repeating the speeches made earlier by Claudius and Gertrude. Together, they decide to probe Hamlet using questions and answers. They practice, borrowing the scoring used in tennis, but succeed only in further confusing each other. Whether they are seriously interested in the answers to each other’s questions, or whether they want to beat the other one at the game, is not clear. Hamlet enters without speaking, then leaves. Immediately, Guildenstern decides that Hamlet has changed greatly. Guildenstern suggests that Rosencrantz pretend to be Guildenstern, while Guildenstern pretends to be Hamlet so that they can practice the question-and-answer game. After a while, Rosencrantz begins asking Guildenstern questions about what has recently transpired at Elsinore, the court of Denmark. They conclude confused, because Hamlet seems to have lots of reasons to be upset: his father has recently died under murky circumstances, and his uncle has usurped the throne to become king and married his mother, Gertrude. Hamlet comes back in, confusing his companion Polonius with riddles.

He excitedly greets Rosencrantz and Guildenstern but mistakes one for the other as the stage goes dark. Analysis Whereas Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a tragedy with occasional moments of comedy, Stoppard’s play is a comedy with occasional moments of tragedy. But both plays attempt to portray the complexities of life. According to the plots of both plays, Claudius has summoned Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to help with Hamlet. But, as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern lucidly realize, Hamlet has many reasons to be upset: he has just lost his father, the crown (Claudius has become king of Denmark, even though Hamlet is of age and capable of governing), and his mother (she remarried very quickly after the death of Hamlet’s father). The interweaving of happy and sad things occurs in the riddles Hamlet speaks to Polonius: these might be a tragic result of his madness, they might simply be his childish attempt to make his friends laugh by making fun of an old man, or they might be a little of both.

Similarly, the verbal sparring between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern resembles a comedy routine, with non sequitur following non sequitur, even as they try to figure out whether their friend, tragically, has gone insane. They even highlight the nonsensical nature of their dialogue by keeping score as if the questions and answers were a game of tennis. Nobody, including the men themselves, seems able to tell Rosencrantz from Guildenstern, which is funny but also sad, as it comments on the difficulties of establishing a firm identity in a chaotic world. Like life, the two plays have moments of joy and sadness, and neither is wholly funny nor entirely tragic. Stoppard takes lines directly from Hamlet as a way of emphasizing the relationship between his play and Shakespeare’s play. On the one hand, without Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead would not exist. Stoppard borrows heavily from Shakespeare’s text, including the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and he incorporates lines verbatim from Shakespeare into his own work. Whenever Rosencrantz and Guildenstern speak to a character from Hamlet, they switch from modern English to Shakespearean English.

Although they do not notice the difference, we as readers are meant to pick up on the change in language. On the other hand, Stoppard’s versions of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are very different from the two men found in Hamlet. Whereas Shakespeare’s portrays the two men as goons with little personality, Stoppard gives the men individual characteristics and far more lines than in the original play. They think, feel, joke, gamble, and reason. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern clearly want to help Hamlet, and they attempt to ascertain whether Hamlet has, in fact, gone insane through the game of question-and-answer. In this sense, Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not simply act as agents of Claudius, as Shakespeare’s versions do. Instead, Stoppard lets Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try to function independently from both Claudius, their king, and Shakespeare, their original creator. Stoppard wants to emphasize Hamlet as not solely the greatest work of drama in the English language but as a play capable of speaking to us on a human, visceral level.

Question: Which Shakespeare play features Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?
Answer: Hamlet